Table of Contents

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Detroit Area Study, 1971: Social Problems and Social Change in Detroit (ICPSR 7325)

Principal Investigator(s):Duncan, Otis D.; Schuman, Howard

Summary:

The study was conducted during the spring and summer of
1971. The aim of the 1971 Detroit Area Study was to gather information
on social change in the Detroit area by replicating items from nine
earlier Detroit Area Studies that were conducted in 1953-1959, 1968,
and 1969. The criteria used for selecting the question items were that
they: (1) not be dated by wording or subject matter, (2) be relevant
to some problem of current public concern or a continuing issue of
sociological theory, and (3) be of the type that would be manageable
in a long ... (more info)

The study was conducted during the spring and summer of
1971. The aim of the 1971 Detroit Area Study was to gather information
on social change in the Detroit area by replicating items from nine
earlier Detroit Area Studies that were conducted in 1953-1959, 1968,
and 1969. The criteria used for selecting the question items were that
they: (1) not be dated by wording or subject matter, (2) be relevant
to some problem of current public concern or a continuing issue of
sociological theory, and (3) be of the type that would be manageable
in a long interview on diverse subjects. The questions chosen to be
included in the 1971 Detroit Area Study examined issues such as values
in marriage, ideal number of children, satisfaction of wives with
marriage, decision-making and division of labor within a marriage,
attitudes toward women and work, child-rearing, social participation,
religious participation and beliefs, moral and job values, political
orientation and participation, evaluation of various institutions, and
racial attitudes. In addition to the items replicated from the
previous studies, respondents' attitudes toward the United States
sending troops to Vietnam were explored. Background variables
established respondents' age, sex, race, educational level, marital
status, occupation, class identification, and relationship to head of
household. Demographic information was also collected on the
respondent's spouse and parents.

More information about the Detroit Area Studies Project is available on this Web site.

Study Description

Citation

Duncan, Otis D., and Howard Schuman. Detroit Area Study, 1971: Social Problems and Social Change in Detroit. ICPSR07325-v2. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2010-09-30. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07325.v2

Methodology

Response Rates:
The response rate of the Wayne County portion of the sample was 80.2 percent.

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Created variable labels and/or value labels.

Created online analysis version with question text.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:1984-05-10

Version History:

2010-09-30 SPSS, SAS, and Stata setup files and ready-to-go files were released with variable labels and value labels. Online analysis capabilities with question text were also added.

1998-02-10 The SPSS data definition statements for this
collection are being reissued with minor editing changes, and SAS data
definition statements are now available. In addition, the codebook and
data collection instrument have been converted to a machine-readable PDF
file, and a reformatted logical record length data file is now
available.